Today's roundup include the first North Qualifier cup details, IGN's Rise of Arena Esports video and discussion on Mietitura d'Anime and Legendary Follower Items.

Arena World Championships

Blizzard has announced the date and sign ups for the first North America Qualifier cup!

Blizzard

Calling all World of Warcraft esports fanatics! The first North America Qualifier Cup will be broadcast live on Twitch, on Saturday April 8th at 11:00am PDT. You can read up on entry requirements, prizes and community events below. Get involved!

All About Tournaments

The events will be 3v3 Arena Tournaments on live realms

There is a double elimination bracket

Team rosters are 4-player, but you can sign-up with 3

All series are best-of-5

Tournament Mode is required; all gear is normalized and honor talents and artifact power are maximized

All About Prize Pools

1st place: $3,000, 160 points

2nd place: $1,500, 80 points

3rd place: $1,000, 36 points

4th place: $500, 20 points

5th and 6th places: 12 points each

All About Points

This is a great year for esports and a big year for World of Warcraft. The new points system allows us to spread tournaments consistently throughout the year, which keeps up the momentum and excitement— from the tournament all the way to the Championship. Don't forget, the top 12 teams are the ones who earn their place in the Championship.

All About Rosters

Didn't finish in the top 6 in the first tournament? Not a problem! Teams can change their team members as often as they want, until points are earned. Once you have points on the board, your teams are set in stone. Well, except. . .

Teams who earn points are allotted one roster swap without consequences.

After the free swap, there is an automatic 50% reduction to your points tally.

If you want to know more, you should definitely read the official rules below.

Teams will be seeded by the rating they achieve at the end of the season.

The open tournament bracket starts on April 6th, and plays through until the 7th.

The last 8 teams will be broadcast live on Twitch on Saturday, April 8th starting at 11:00am PDT.

We're excited to partner-up with GCDTV, who will be helping us out with all that has to happen behind the scenes (which is a lot).

The full rules and regs—plus the essential player handbook—can be found here.

Want To Run Your Own Tournament?

We would love to see more of these! The more community involvement the better and there are some seriously solid reasons for doing it. Community-run tournaments directly impact which teams end up in the Arena World Championships, as all approved community-run events award points. If you're even remotely interested, here's what you should do: read the guide, fill out the application form and send it to us. If you have any questions about running your own event, get in touch. We're here to help and want you to create as many buzzing community events as it's possible to have.

IGN's Esports Stories - Rise of Arena Esports

IGN released a video describing how the WoW Arena made it's way into Esports. The video includes discussion with Lead PvP Designer, Brian Holinka and other Blizzard employees.

We've summarized some of the interesting points, but you can view the whole video on IGN's website.

WoW Arena is easy to understand - It's 3v3 and the last team standing wins.

Esports is for the community. The community helps the scene grow.

This year, the WoW Arena World Championships is expanding to 5 cups from 3 and are are taking more teams to Regionals and Blizzcon.

There will be more content at Regionals, and more content at Blizzcon.

Sign ups for the first Qualifier Cup have started! For more information on the WoW Arena World Championship 2017, check out the announcement post.

Reap Souls

Blizzard

Thanks for all the feedback. Details will be forthcoming, but we do want to do something to help Anime Tormentate generation near the start of encounters (wherever the new resetting takes place). It's still important that the resources at the start of an encounter be somewhat standardized, but we understand that starting at 0 and not being able to use Mietitura d'Anime during your opening burst isn't a timing that feels great for that ability.

Legendary Follower Items

Blizzard has clarified that Legendary Follower Items do not count towards the bad luck protection of Legendary Gear.

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a PTR environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the bosses being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

Q: How do I get into the raid zone?

A: In Dalaran, Orgrimmar, or Stormwind, you may speak to Nexus-Lord Donjon Rade Sr. in order to teleport into the raid zone while it is open for testing. (The option to teleport into a zone will not be available when the zone is not open for testing.)

Q: What character should I use to test the raid?

A: Whichever you prefer. We will be scaling players' effective level to 110 for raid testing, and their item level to an appropriate threshold for the encounter(s) being tested. For 7.2 raid testing, we'll be granting players all the new 7.2 artifact traits IF players have done the quest to reveal those new traits. Complete the Broken Shore intro experience in order to access this quest.

Q: How long does testing last?

A: The primary purpose of testing is to give us the information we need to balance the encounters, evaluate how mechanics are playing out in practice, and identify bugs. Once we're satisfied that we've received that information for a given boss, we'll be shutting down testing. Usually this takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours, but there are no guarantees.

Commenti

Commento di Oixio

WoW as E-Sport? it sounded like a joke from the start, but apparently Devs make it much worsespeaking about beating a dead horse

Commento di Skyrei

on 2017-03-22T22:23:24-05:00

3k$ for the first place? Hahahaha

oh wait, you were serious?Let me laugh harder

HAHAHAHAHAHA

WoW as E-Sport? it sounded like a joke from the start, but apparently Devs make it much worsespeaking about beating a dead horse

OMG only $3,000! How terrible. /eyeroll

Commento di hotaru251

on 2017-03-22T23:30:08-05:00

3,000 for 3v3.

are you really complaining about basically free $?

Commento di sarkku113

on 2017-03-23T01:53:37-05:00

I guess that 3000$ should be viewed as your travel and hotel money for Regionals.

Commento di Oixio

on 2017-03-23T03:47:15-05:00

you people failed to realize the amount of time and effort competitive players have to invest to even come up to the level of skill and gameplay they have to achieve to just even have a hope to win couple of games in the elimination brakets

by no means, this could remotely even be consereded as "free money"

you also ignore the fact, that other e-sports award for similar sort of competitions much much larger amountsso if Blizzard would be serious about their engagement in e-sports, they could cough up a bigger prize than thisif anything else, you could consider this as a promotion or even as advertisement

if company could invest in self-promotion, at the start of theis e-sport engagement and it fails , then no harm done, it's just pure advertisement, but if this self-promotion succeeds, then it would attract other companies willing to advertise and promote teamsbasic business

but saying, that players who spend huge amount of time selfimprove to a level of even daring to sign themselves to this competion and then spiting in their face with 3k first prize for a 3 or 4 man team? this would be not only insult (considering that less than 1k per player for a win would be more like slave labor) , but most importantly would show how unserious Blizzard is about this whole idea of their commitment to e-sports

why a person would waste so much time, just to hope to possible reward of a 1k or less?

so drop this act! if anything else, those money could never motivate anyone (unless you are filthy rich and couldn't be bothered about money)flipping burgers would give me alot more than this for a same amount of time spent, not even mentioning real jobs

Commento di D34thsEyEs

on 2017-03-23T04:46:28-05:00

Imagine if Blizzard took up the idea for Pet Battle World Championships. That would be something fun to watch. =P

Commento di Killsomethin

on 2017-03-23T07:47:32-05:00

oh come on 3k is nothing in todays market , i mean if a company is raking in 100's of millions of dollars but can only give out 3k for top prize that's just sad . To it on a money thats only 150 people who buy wow tokens. if its 3k for the team thats 1,500 each put on say 10% for fed thats 150 just on taxes from the fed , state taxes then travel time an cost an pretty soon that 3k is not that inpressive anymore. my 2 cents.

Commento di moofox6

on 2017-03-23T11:08:25-05:00

oh come on 3k is %^&* in todays market , i mean if a company is raking in 100's of millions of dollars but can only give out 3k for top prize that's just sad . To it on a money thats only 150 people who buy wow tokens. if its 3k for the team thats 1,500 each put on say 10% for fed thats 150 just on taxes from the fed , state taxes then travel time an cost an pretty soon that 3k is not that inpressive anymore. my 2 cents.

Its a qualifier, so prize money isn't the focal point. If you make it in, you will have a much better opportunity to really cash in with a chance at Blizzcon. If $3k is too small of a purse, then there will be low attendance, and a much narrower field to play against.